Be afraid . . .

The peacenik crowd always says they are afraid of their government. And I always smiled, thinking them paranoid. But now I've caught a whiff of that cold dread. It started with the jackboot response of the Federal Communications Commission to Janet Jackson's nipple, continued through public school teachers across the country being coerced not to teach evolution, and burst forth with the mobilization over Terri Schiavo.

The government is supposed to be our check on muscular Christianity, which would slide easily from handing you a pamphlet on the street to grilling you over on a spit until you confess your heresies, were it not for the restraint of law.

That might sound alarmist. But who knows where this will go next?